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On Afghan Footbaths and Sacred Cows in Kosovo: Urban Legends of Intervention

Title data

Bliesemann de Guevara, Berit ; Kühn, Florian P.:
On Afghan Footbaths and Sacred Cows in Kosovo: Urban Legends of Intervention.
In: Peacebuilding. Vol. 3 (2015) Issue 1 . - pp. 17-35.
ISSN 2164-7267
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/21647259.2014.969508

Abstract in another language

Drawing on ideas of the narrative turn in social and cultural studies, this article explores the oral, informal side of communication in contexts of international peacebuilding interventions. It takes urban legends – entertaining stories about events that supposedly happened to ‘a friend of a friend’ and usually contain a moral – as a methodological access road to the study of meta-narratives that underpin interveners' understandings of themselves and the intervention context. Three categories of urban legends/meta-narratives are discussed: legends about ‘the intervened’ whose common thread is barbarianism; legends about ‘the interveners’ which revolve around a meta-narrative of Western/Northern hubris; and legends about intercultural interactions which reproduce a meta-narrative of cultural misunderstandings and intervention failure. Using Scott's idea of public and hidden transcripts, we discuss possible functions of such narrations in the context of interventions.

Further data

Item Type: Article in a journal
Refereed: Yes
Keywords: intervention; peacebuilding; statebuilding; narrative; urban legend; anecdote; storytelling; communication
Institutions of the University: Faculties
Faculties > Faculty of Cultural Studies
Faculties > Faculty of Cultural Studies > Chair Sociology of Africa
Faculties > Faculty of Cultural Studies > Chair Sociology of Africa > Chair Sociology of Africa - Univ.-Prof. Dr. Jana Hönke
Result of work at the UBT: Yes
DDC Subjects: 300 Social sciences
300 Social sciences > 300 Social sciences, sociology and anthropology
Date Deposited: 17 Jan 2023 07:57
Last Modified: 17 Jan 2023 07:57
URI: https://eref.uni-bayreuth.de/id/eprint/73415